Busy days! Second semester begins and my mood improves tremendously. In the 1+ month since my last classes, I had started to lose sight of why I’m here. The return to school is a welcome reminder: while I would never consider living in Jogja on a permanent basis, it is absolutely the place I want to be studying right now. Unproductive thoughts and mutterings about an early evacuation have been banished. Dad's visit was brief (or seemed brief since I was stupidly busy for so much of it) but it really helped. What we'll call a difficult situation stateside notwithstanding, I'm officially back on track for a fruitful second semester here.
To this end, it is exciting to finally acquire a decent wayang for practicing at home. The Kongsudewo wayang pictured below is the nicest I can find at the remote leatherworking place my classmate Wuharno takes me [which still places it a few serious quality grades below the ones we use in class]. The craftsman replaces the kapet [the handle + spine of the puppet] while we’re there by warming the strand of buffalo horn over a gas lamp and bending it to conform to the shape of the leather figure. It’s a simple but impressive display of skill.
Danang is explaining different Ramayana characters to me before class one day [their names, family tree, temperament, and vocal characterization] when he gets to Drona, a dandy fop with a hilarious little hand articulated at the wrist.
Danang: “He is… very rich. And he fuck… horse!”
Justin: “Uh… he fucks whores? Or do you mean he fucks a horse?”
Danang: “Horse! His wife… horse. Clip-clop, clip-clop. Horse!”
As he tells it, Drona is the Kurawa teacher of war and ‘spiritual images'. Drona’s wife is a shape-shifter, so when she assumes the form of a horse he uses her to ride across the island on which they live. But along the way he sometimes becomes confused and… one thing leads to another.
This mural is located a few blocks from my house, on the side of what I think is a Laundromat. It’s probably my favorite piece of public art in Jogja, mostly because it reminds me of the dreary illustrations in one of my favorite books from childhood, about a group of Halloween monsters that form a rock and roll band. [The book itself was folded up accordion-style and unfolded to reveal one long image on the back. Does anyone know what it’s was called? Buddy? Anyone?]
This is the first song from the second (and apparently final?) Kilat Khusus performance. There were sound issues, but the sound was an improvement over the first one. [Read: it was way louder.] Carla returned to Australia this week* but our brief collaboration led to a lot of really pleasing moments. And there’s a Myspace for it.
* :(
Random Sights Worth Mentioning
-Riding on Jl. Bantul early in the morning, I pass a shriveled little Javanese woman carrying a woven basket piled high with home-made knives.
-On the motorbike ride to the village leather guy’s shop, a shirtless dude with a big, curly Danny McBride mullet stands by the side of the road. He has a spray bottle in one hand and is spraying water on the birds flitting about the cage in the gravel at his feet. [Is this how birds drink? That doesn’t seem right.]
-Waiting to turn onto a busy street in the morning, a couple on a motorcycle stops at the light in front of me. Their storage compartments (two bamboo boxes/cages affixed to the back of the bike, effectively tripling its width) are overflowing with chickens. The chickens’ dark coloration is similar enough that, crammed together like this, their shapes are confused and they become one heaving, living mass, like some nightmare witch’s skirt. I make slow eye contact with the woman. She sees my fear.
-Out on a date* and walking around the city, we pause on a bridge. The thing that runs through parts of Jogja isn’t exactly a river… it’s more of a stream with undetermined parts water and sewage that trickles between tall concrete walls, with sprawling complexes of Indo hovels on either side. Bridges’ illumination falls just a few shades short of a blacklight, casting an alien glow about the area that almost –but not quite- masks the creamy brown of the “water” rushing by.
We stare down. “God, that’s disgusting,” the girl says, and I agree. It is a genuinely pleasant moment. And then, as if on cue, a guy emerges from the shadows of the bridge, drops his pants, and proceeds to take a long, leisurely shit into the water directly below us.
*Don’t get excited. This was an isolated incident; that person studies far, far away from here. The ‘08-‘09 Year Of Solitude Tour shows no signs of interruption.
Huun-Huur-Tu “Prayer”
John Zorn “Virgin Sacrifice”
Björk “Where Is The Line (Fantomas Mix)
Death Ambient “Thermohaline”
Bonnie “Prince” Billy “The World’s Greatest”
Tanya Tagaq “Construction”
Dirty Projectors + David Byrne “Knotty Pine”
Tripping Daisy “Waited A Light Year”
Brian Eno + Robert Fripp “The Heavenly Music Corporation”
Dälek “Street Diction”
Atlas Sound “Children's Hospital (Screaming in the Face of Death #2)”
Area “Gerontocrazia”
Fever Ray "I'm Not Done"
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